


perennial

by shannedo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Background Relationships, Finale Denial, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28958760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shannedo/pseuds/shannedo
Summary: Dean turned forty-two on a Sunday, and all he really wanted was for Cas to kiss him.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	perennial

**Author's Note:**

> This is not beta-d. In fact, I'm just dumping it and running before I can talk myself out of it.

Dean turned forty-two on a Sunday, and all he really wanted was for Cas to kiss him.

The thought was ringing in his head, clear as a bell, as he sat up in bed sometime after six in the morning.

The angel was a warm, solid lump on the other side of his - their - bed, his face pressed firmly into the pillow to ward away the first signs of daytime. Dean smiled to himself, at the way Cas’s brow furrowed in sleep, desperately clinging on to oblivion. When he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Cas’s temple, the crease in his brow smoothed out like ripples on a lake.

Dean left Cas sleeping - he would only be another half hour or so - and trailed off to the kitchen in his slippers and dressing gown, warding against the late January chill in the air. The sounds of hushed voices and clink of cutlery and mugs guided him through the dim morning light and the fogginess he felt before his first coffee. Like he’d expected, Jack and Sam were already at the kitchen table, Jack with a bowl piled high with the kind of cereal that made him jittery, and Sam with a cup of black coffee and a serene expression. Dean mumbled a good morning, smiling but politely ignoring the cards and presents stacked in a small, neat pile in the middle of the table until they were explicitly given to him, and made a beeline for the coffee pot.

He could tell it was his birthday just by the fact that Sam had likely been up since five but had still kept the coffee piping hot, ready for Dean.

“Morning!” came his brother’s chirpy morning voice. “Happy birthday, Dean.”

Dean turned around from the coffee pot to say a thanks, and only managed an _oof_ as his little - hah - brother enveloped him in a hug. For someone of Sam’s size, it bewildered Dean that he could sneak up on anyone. Or maybe Dean was just getting unobservant in his old age. “Thanks, Sam,” he said, giving him a pat on the back. Even now, after nearly four decades, the smell of his brother’s clothes still reminded him of a long-gone family home in Lawrence, but that thought didn’t raise any more sadness in him now than a faint and settled pang. He called it progress and clung a little harder to his brother’s flannel.

When they broke apart, Jack was practically bouncing on his seat. “You gotta open my present first,” he insisted, his mouth half full of chewed cereal and little marshmallows that glowed like nuclear waste.

Sam smiled, stepping back from Dean, “Jack, remember, you gotta-“

“Oh!” Jack said, lurching out of his seat less like a God and more like a hyperactive three-year-old. He was _both,_ Dean guessed, but definitely favoured one. Jack was about half Sam’s body mass, but he hit Dean at such a speed that he still forced a grunt out of his chest. “Happy birthday!”

The feeling that flooded Dean’s ribcage was like a torrent of molasses, warm and heavy. He wrapped his arms around Jack’s back, even let himself rest his chin against Jack’s head. “Thanks, kiddo.”

Sam wrinkled his nose over Jack’s head in a way that read as a faint apology for letting Jack get at the toddler rocket fuel before dawn, but Dean didn’t much care. Jack had kinda been like this for a few days anyway, and the glitter that had been appearing everywhere in the bunker and was now covering an envelope on the table was enough of a hint as to why.

Jack was still bouncing on his toes, and Dean laid a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Before I open presents, we gotta wait for-“

“I’m awake,” came a gruff voice behind them, in a tone that could only be described as regretful. It did nothing to slow the lurch that Dean’s heart gave, and when he spun around, he saw a smile mirroring his own spreading on Cas’s lips. “Happy birthday,” Cas said.

He had a card and wrapped present in hand, but he still stood awkwardly, a country mile away from their little three-person cluster by the coffee pot. And it made Dean’s heart pang. Part of it was just Cas - an eternity of angel mannerisms couldn’t be scrubbed out by a mere decade on Earth - but part of it was....

This was dumb. They were dumb. He crossed the space between them and wrapped his boyfriend, his angel, his life partner up in his arms and pressed a sloppy kiss to the peak of his cheekbone. “Thanks, baby,” he said, as solid arms wound around his lower back.

It was Sam who masterminded breakfast, dicing up little bowls of strawberries and blueberries between flipping pancakes on the stove top. Cas manned the coffee pot for Sam and Dean, steeped himself a mug of tea, and fetched Jack a glass of orange juice with a straw in it, because he worried about the acidity wearing down Jack’s tooth enamel. That left Dean at the kitchen table, supervised by Jack, as he worked through his little pile of cards and presents.

From Sam and Eileen, there was a beautiful photo album, bound in smooth black leather. It was half-filled already, with rare pictures of Sam and Dean as children, Jack on his first birthday, Dean and Eileen posing for a picture, leaning against the trunk of the Impala with beer bottles in hand after a successful hunt, amongst others. And one that looked too candid for him to have known it was happening, his hand slipped into Cas’s, and Cas smiling at him with that stupid look that never failed to make Dean’s heart thud like a mistimed bass drum. The rest of the pages were left empty, an open invitation from Sam and Eileen to keep filling it with new memories. “This is beautiful, Sammy,” he croaked, and did his best to meet his brother’s eye.

Sam smiled, didn’t call him out on his emotional constipation, and said “Eileen will be over later, I think she’s got another treat for you.”

Dean was thrilled to hear it, but didn’t have the chance to respond, because now Jack was pressing a ridiculously glittery envelope into his hands. He knew he’d be washing the stuff out of Jack’s clothes for a month, but the gleeful look in the kid’s eye was enough to make Dean bite down his complaint, and he tried very hard not to grin like an idiot as he opened the envelope.

The card was indeed full of glitter and hand cut heart-shaped confetti, but it was the shaky writing on the front that made his breath catch. With each letter spelled out in a different coloured marker, Jack had written “Happy birthday Dad” on the front, and then there was the present Cas had brought. The joint, accompanying gift from Cas and Jack was enough to set his bottom lip wobbling – a blue coffee mug with _#1 Dad_ on the front in big, yellow letters.

“C’mere,” Dean grunted, and pulled Jack tight against his chest, furiously blinking away the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. There was thick emotion in his chest churning and gargling like a carburettor clogged with gravel, and he mumbled, “Love you,” into the boy’s as-yet unbrushed hair. Jack let out a happy sigh and leaned into him heavier.

Cas and Sam were both looking a little glossy eyed by the time the pair pulled apart, which Sam artfully covered with a loud clearing of his throat and the lighting of the candle on top of Dean’s pancake stack.

The most tone-deaf chorus he’d ever heard of “Happy birthday” followed, which was a given, as he was the only one who could actually carry a tune, but he refused to sink to the level of douchiness of joining in on his own birthday song. Then, they were digging into their pancakes, talking about their plans for the day, and just soaking in the early morning serenity.

Before long, Cas and Jack were hugging the brothers goodbye and promising to be back by five to help ready Dean’s birthday supper. He would’ve liked to have them for the whole day, but there would be plenty time for that once heaven was - well, heaven again – and truthfully, he was just grateful he got the morning with them.

Once Jack and Sam were ready to go about their respective days, they stepped away from Cas and Dean, leaving them just kind of looking at each other. Dean was normally like a shot fired from a pistol to cross the distance between them, take Cas into his arms, kiss him silly, but he couldn’t nudge that first thought that had ricocheted around his head when he’d woken up this morning.

Cas was looking at him. Standing at a distance. Hands hanging at his sides. “Have a good day, Dean,” he said, in a soft voice that made Dean’s chest ache.

Two months. Two whole months since they’d bust out of the Empty, saved the world together and held each other, aching, and crying and kissing fervently in the aftershocks.

Twelve years spent falling in love, two months spent being in love, and Cas was still just standing there. Like a dick.

With a barely concealed huff, Dean crossed the chasm between them and kissed him, gently cradling a strong and stubbled jaw in both his hands. “You too, baby.”

When Cas and Jack were gone, he belatedly realised he’d forgotten to open Cas’s card after feeling like he’d been sideswiped by a freight train after Jack’s.

It was a simple, handsome card. Navy with gold lettering.

_To Dean,_

_Happy birthday._

_I love you._

_from Cas_

He held it to his chest.

* * *

Turns out Eileen’s idea of a birthday treat was the hunter’s equivalent of a game of whack-a-mole. When she’d driven him and Sam out to a horse ranch an hour down the highway and explained, Dean had started laughing and pulled his (hopefully, future, one-day) sister-in-law into a bear hug.

The ranch was infested with little goblin-like creatures that Eileen had affectionately termed “gnomes”. It was by no means the kind of world-ending threat they were used to, but the “gnomes” had been popping up out of the ground and spooking horses, even landing a few bites, which had led to more than one infected wound and thrown rider. “I thought it warranted the Winchester-Leahy treatment,” Eileen said and signed to Dean, who was bouncing on his toes like a kid in a candy store.

When Eileen turned back to her car, Dean said behind her, “Hey, your names sound pretty good together, huh, Sammy?”

Sam’s only response was to glower.

That only served to put Dean in a better mood, though, and soon they were all wreaking havoc on the overgrown field, trying whatever their best instincts and experience said oughta work.

The little gremlins were fast, ducking and diving into burrows quicker than Dean could get a good swing at them, and popping up behind him to grab at his ankles. “Little bastards!” He growled as one sunk its teeth into his ankle.

The gnome blew a raspberry at him and uncannily parroted back _“Bastard!”_ It was then that he finally connected a hit but was quick to find out that an iron crowbar was about as much use on the little shits as, well, a crowbar.

“Hey!” He yelled to his compatriots, waving an arm over his head. Sam and Eileen both stopped to look, wearing twin expressions of wild bemusement, and really, he wished he had a camera on him. “Iron sucks!” He said, signing it large and waving his useless crowbar.

Eileen nodded, but Sam seemed to have an idea as he watched one of the slimy little creatures wiggle its ass at him tauntingly. A familiar spark lit up behind his eyes and he pulled a smallish burlap sack of rock salt out of his coat pocket.

No faster than Sam could throw a handful of salt like cast dye, the gnome exploded with a yelp, splattering Sam with green-yellow goo. “Gross!” he yelped.

Dean felt childish laughter bubble up out of his chest at that, disbelieving, as Sam shook his hands free of gunk and wiped it off his face. “Oh my god, they’re like slugs!” Dean said with a sharp cackle.

“This is fucking gross,” was the only response from a churlish Sam, as both Dean and Eileen laughed at him.

“Dean!” Eileen called, and then there was a small bag of rock salt arcing through the air towards him, which he caught neatly.

Then they were off to the races, with Dean and Eileen automatically falling into a pattern of systematically herding the little bastards and then working with Sam to do the exploding. The yellow-green goo stunk to high heavens, and made Dean’s eyes water, but they were having so much fun he barely even noticed, too busy hooting, hollering, and laughing as Sam got prissy about his new jacket getting stained with the monster equivalent of snot.

When they were down to the last few, they had to chase them down manually, amongst the litany of profanities the creatures were picking up from them and hurling back. Dean had his last gnome cornered between himself and a fence post when he heard a warning shout from Sam.

A second too late.

The rock to the back of his knee was such a shock that it buckled his leg, and he thumped into the soft dirt. There was a particularly large and menacing gnome glowering at him from its burrow, reaching for another stone, and Dean was scrabbling for his rock salt before he ended up with a concussion on his birthday-

But then the air crackled with static, and there was a whooshing wing beat, as the gnome was - smited? Smote? - from existence, splattering Dean in the foul-smelling goo from top to toe.

He looked up at the angel - his angel - clad in his signature trench-coat and frown. And he fell back into the dirt in fits of laughter.

“Dean,” Cas said in lieu of greeting, looking vaguely troubled at the monster snot covering his dress shoes and trousers.

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean said with a wheeze, and reached out a hand to signal Cas to help him. He felt himself being yanked to his feet like he weighed nothing and was still quieting the waves of laughter racking his stomach when he saw the way Cas was looking at him.

The soft glow in his features, the amusement, the adoration. “What exactly are you idiots doing?”

Dean flashed him his most charming smile – the devil-may-care one – and said, in a very low and serious voice, “Saving the world.”

Cas held onto his fingers, reticent to let go, and he just stood there, and looked at Dean with the softest smile on his face.

“I thought you said you’d be back at five?” Dean finally asked, breaking the beat of charged silence.

“I, uh,” Cas looked away with pink rising at his cheeks, instead watching as Eileen and Sam picked their way back across the field to each other, still wild-eyed and laughing. “I forgot to show Jack how to set the clock you gave us in our office, so I believe it shows the wrong time.”

The image of a God and a seraph running the reconstruction of heaven from a cosy little office but being unable to set a ten-dollar clock from Target to Central Standard Time was enough to set Dean off chuckling again. _Don’t ever change,_ he thought faintly, as he watched his own amusement reflected back in Cas’s extraordinary eyes.

Cas was still holding his hand. And his eyes were so soft, and so blue.

It caught Dean’s breath in his throat, and something bubbled up.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said. His stomach gave a jolt, but he had to ask before he lost his nerve. He squeezed Cas’s hand, to give himself courage more than anything. “How come you never kiss me?”

Cas looked dumbfounded for a second, his eyes darting to Dean’s lips, and by God if this wasn’t the wrong time and the wrong place, Dean thought, as a rock settled in the pit of his stomach. The dim winter sun above them was still warm enough to make the monster snot on both of them stink that little more, and Cas’s jaw was slack and flapping a little as he searched for the right words.

Dean suddenly felt stupid and awful for bringing it up.

Except- he didn’t, not really.

Because every kiss, every touch, every _everything,_ had to come from Dean. And he wasn’t sick of it – he could never be sick of anything that let him touch Cas, be with Cas – but he would be lying if he said it didn’t hurt sometimes.

Like on the morning of his forty-second birthday, and the man who had admitted to being crazy, stupid, “loved the whole world for you” in love with him two months ago had stood six feet away and just looked.

Like he was just _looking_ now.

“I- it doesn’t matter,” Dean said, his eyes falling, his heart falling. “Sorry, I don’t want to ruin the day.”

The sound that came out of Cas came from his chest, and could only be described as a _grunt,_ pure frustration.

And then suddenly, there was a hand on his face and a thumb on his upper lip, swiping away disgusting, sickly, _stinking_ goo from the curve of his cupid’s bow.

And then there were lips.

Hot and chapped.

Crushing against his.

Some ridiculous keening sound was forced from Dean’s chest, and he threw his spare arm around Cas’s neck with abandon, his other still clasping Cas’s fingers firmly in his. Cas’s weather-worn lips against his soft ones felt a little sore, and he was going to buy him a chapstick, and their respective tea- and coffee-breath was mingling together in a noxious mix, but it was _perfect._ Perfect in the way that Cas was pulling him against his broad chest, reeling him in and holding him tight and saying _I will never let you go._

And Dean would never let Cas let him go, he thought, and nipped at his bottom lip.

“When I told you,” Cas was saying as he pulled back, into the bare couple of inches between their lips, “that my happiness was just in _being,_ in the act of loving you, I never dreamed I could _have_ you.

“Most days, I still don’t believe that I get to have you.”

 _Thump_ went Dean’s heart, and it was his turn to reel Cas in and press crushing kisses to Cas’s lips, blood roaring in his ears and battering against his ribcage. “I’ll teach you,” he mumbled into Cas’s hairline, temple, nose, jaw, anywhere he could land a blistering kiss. _I’ll teach you to believe it._

They both sucked in ragged breaths in the cool, crisp air of late January.

A light frost bit at the ground, and curling clouds of white emanated from their lips.

“I’ll teach you. I’m yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @thursdayseraph - I swear I'm nice, come and say hi :)
> 
> Happy birthday, king! <3


End file.
